Saturday, 28 July 2007

where did July go?

This always happens in the summer. July is a write off for some reason. I think it is because it just gets so painfully hot that i close my eyes and forget it exists, living fully only in the mornings and evenings when it is dark and cool enough to move.This july was even more of a zip-by because my mornings were filled with immersian italian classes, my afternoons with homework and playing star wars galaxies and my evenings with much of the same. This has been my escape month. I did no sca work and in the middle of it all we vamoosed off to London for the Huge Star wars celebrations.

---here is the trip cut and paste from an email I sent because I ain't retyping it all---

We left from Malpensa airport on easy jet- one of the better discountairlines and for the most part it was smooth sailing. Marcus has flownwith easy jet before so he knows 'how it works'

The flight was about and hour and a half long and we got there more orless in good time despite the being made to wait for 45 minutes for a newtake off slot by malpensa atc.

The flight was smooth and we landed without any issues at gatwick. Got ourluggage and because Easy Jet allows you to buy the train tickets for theexpress to london in the plane all we had to do was grab some food (cornish yum yum yum pastie) and find the train- easy.

Train goes ever 15 minutes so we were in London proper in half anhour andfound ourselves in Victoria Station and oh my lord the people... so many..it felt great!!! Civilization!!! We did the lost tourist thing for a fewminutes then found our bearings and stood in line to talk to a real personabout how to navigate the undergournd system. In the end we bought twofull week passes ( new oyster card system) for 27 pounds each ( so muchcheaper than single tickets every day) and then went off to find ourhotel.

We took the circle line from Victoria to where the Dock light rial startsand transferred there to the DLR to Limehouse which is where our hotelwas. Holiday Inn express and it was really right around the corner fromthe station so it was a short walk with our suitcases.

The hotel was to my great surprise excellent. ( we have not had good luckwith Holiday Inns in the past) but this one was very clean, veryconvinient and had everything we could ask for, even the room was nicewith a small couch to watch TV, kettle with tea and instant coffee, A/Cand so on.

So Thursday we had most of the late afternoon and evening to explore thedocklands area - very nice. It is the new Banking area of London and allvery modern and snobbish. We ended up fining a decent place to have a mealand settled down to bangers and mash for me + a guinness and Marcus hadfish and chips + a guinness. The weather was brilliant and it felt like agood omen.

we walked back to the hotel and watched some tv and relaxed before themain event.

Friday I woke up more excited than I can remember in a long time, that kidat christmas feeling. We showered, dressed in our "we are star wars fansof various sorts t-shirts" and had breakfast then off we went.

The train was fairly quiet it was early but we spotted a few people goingto the same place as us, they had that look in their eyes...

When the train stopped at the Excell center the conductor did the usualblah blah speech about taking all your belongings with you but then added"and don't forget your lightsabers ,,," excitement grew and people cheered! ( I love British sense of humour!)

When we got there we saw stormtroopers ( the 501st in action) andwandereed inside to line up for our pre paid- tickets.

After that we meandered about a little but the actual exhibition halldidn't open for another 2 hours for us so we went back into the Canarywarf for breakfast and browsing. By the time we got back to the Excellcenter things were open.

It was cool but for the most part we looked at the stalls ( mostly it wasa huge star wars products mall) and watched the 501st in action, took somephotos and a few of the organised talks/ events - that evening we watchedthe opening speeches and most of a scfreening of ANH till it got too cold.then we went back to east india gate to find supper sadly the restaurantwe found was bad, bad service , bad food but that was okay, afterwardstired and happy we went back to the hotel to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

day 2 we decided to not rush in until we heard from one of our on linestar wars galaxies friends that he wanted to meet, then we headed out, andmuch to ours and the organizer's shocks were confronted with thousands ofpeople. The event sold out on Saturday and line ups to get into theexhibition hall went all the way through the building and out again. Weended up watching some very cool previews of the up and coming animated TVseries. ( Goosbumps on my arms - wow) then we lined up to go inside tomeet Achim.

Achim is German who now lives in London and play online as two charaters (Torlina and Varylin both female- he's not) We only know him from online.It was so cool to meet him and we watched some more talks and took in theshow by Anthony Daniels ( C3P0) then watched the costume show which wasalso cool and in between ate something and wandered around A lot. Most ofsaturday though was spend standing in lines. After the hall closed Achimsaid ciao and went off to see a band and we headed out to eat. We found anamazing indian place at West India Gate and stuffed ourselves silly onamazing indian food. ( The Tale of India- 53 west india dock road, Docklands, free home delivery and you canfind them here www.thetaleofindia.com ) after which we headed back to the hotel and lazed about watching tv and planning out day 3.

Sunday we got on the go early to avoid the massive line ups but as Isuspected Sunday was not nearly so crowded. This time we had a definateplan and saw certain shows the first being the talk by Ray Park who playsDarth Maul in the Phantom Menace - not dissapointed at all he wasamazingly fun to listen to and watch. (Warrick Davies - who played wicket the ewok was the master of ceremonies and he was also very cool and fun to listen to and watch)

after that we went shopping at the biggest star wars mall I have ever seen...- I had thought we would spend a ton of money we didn't really have but the truth is there wasn't much we wanted to buy and the things we really did want were so far out of our price range that it was okay just to look, however I did buy a Dalek bubble bath firgure ( that is a figure who is really a bubble bath bottle) and I got a beautiful.45 scaled replica of Lord vader's light saber for 13 pounds ( an excellent price) and a book - the how to draw starwars book by DK and ended up managing to get it signed by one of the artists.Marcus got a scaled replica of the stormtrooper rifle also for a great price and the day eneded superbly by us managing to chat with the 501st swiss garrison people with whom we had been in email contact.

When the show closed I was so sad. It was just magical. there were so manythings that could have been done better and there were a lot of veryfrustrating issues but in the end it didn't matter, we had fun, and whenit was over we were both sad.

That evening we ate in the pub next to the excell center and then wentback to the hotel to pack up and get ready for the adventure home. Sincewe had most of the morning to poodle about we went back to Canary warf anddid some shopping at Tesco's so I could buy some things for mum.- ( mostly chocolate whioch I can't mail right now as it woudl be a puddle friom the 31+ degrees here)

we never did get into London down town but that was okay, this trip wasfor Star Wars. It was fun and it was relaxing and it was magical.

So now it is back to earth with a bump, though I had my classes to keep mybusy and all the guys were online when we came home so it was not solonely. SOE has made some serious improvements to the SWG game so I amback playing again, much to Marcus's relief.

there are some photos of the event here but the old digital camera is notdoing so well and we still waffle about getting a new one.

http://picasaweb.google.com/merly.gabriel/StarwarsCelebrations

The big guy with the beard is Achim. :)

I have to start publishing my star wars fan story - book 3 because I promised I would begin in August and I left them all hanging - I get bug mail about this now.. so I have to begin. Which means a month of writing will ensue, and inbetween that is the SCA which we are slowly gearing down from. Also in August we have been invited to go to an informal BBQ at the homes of the two swiss 501st people we met inbasel so that will be fun and then we need to get our asses together andmake real costumes to join!

www.501st.com

these guys do VERY cool things.

I now have to catch up on sca work, my book and continue to do some italian every day.But today is Saturday which is poodle about day!